Technical systems often comprise numerous individual technical components, the functions of which depend on parameters, and in particular parameter intervals, which are assigned to the technical components. The size of the corresponding parameter intervals for the individual components influences, in particular the reliability of the individual components. Here and in what follows the term reliability is to be understood in a general sense, which can include any type of variable which provides an expression in any desired way of how robustly the system is running at a particular point in time. For example, the reliability is described by a system reliability function. For any point in time, this function specifies the probability of the system functioning uninterruptedly up to this point in time. Here, the expected value of the system reliability function is often used a characteristic value which specifies the reliability.
Because technical systems nowadays comprise a large number of sub-components, it is desirable to determine in a simple manner what alterations, in particular in the case of the maintenance of individual components, have the greatest effect on the overall reliability of the technical system when the technical system is in operation.
For the purpose of determining the failure characteristics of technical systems, so-called fault-tree analyses are known from the prior art. With these, the individual components of the technical system are combined with each other in a fault tree by means of a Boolean algebra. The Boolean algebra reflects the effect which the failure of a component or a fault in a component, as applicable, has on the stability of the overall technical system. This fault tree analysis is a statistical analysis, using which it is only possible to predict whether there is an overall failure of the system if corresponding faults arise in one or more sub-components.